"Okay, okay, that's what I meant," Hal said. He turned to Wu. "But they must have built a pretty impressive case against him if they got all the way to arresting him, wouldn't you think?"

Wu more than thought it. They had a case, and- since Andrew was the son of a wealthy and prominent man- it was probably a strong one. A gun in the house, a casing in Andrew's car, a positive lineup identification. What she had here, she was beginning to believe, was a young man who'd made an awful mistake.

"What are you thinking?" Hal asked her abruptly.

"Nothing," Wu said. "It's too soon. I don't know anything yet."

"You know he's innocent," Linda said. "We know that."

"Of course," Wu said. "Other than that, though."

By Sunday afternoon, when she met with Hal North again, Wu knew that they had a substantial problem. She also thought she had a solution.

This time it was just she and Hal in the large, bright, and high-ceilinged living room. Hal sat in the middle of a loveseat while Wu perched on a couch.

Linda had gone to visit Andrew and would be gone for at least two hours.

Wu had been lucky to get a couple of folders of discovery on Andrew's case from the DA's office before close of business on Friday. She had spent all day Saturday going over what the police had assembled. It looked very, very bad.

"What's so bad?" North asked.

Wu sat all the way forward on the couch, hunched over in tension. Her folders rested unopened on the coffee table in front of her. "Where do you want to start? It could be almost anywhere. They've got a good case."

"It looks like he did it?"

"Do you know anything beyond what we talked about on Friday?"

North shrugged. "I figured the gun was a problem, but I didn't know how they'd tied that to him. They didn't find it, did they?"

"No. Still no weapon, but there's plenty in here"- she tapped the folders-"to prove to me that he had the gun with him that night. You want me to go over it piece by piece?"